ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on ‘creative industries’ and discusses the concept and processes of creativity that take place in cultural production. In so doing, he makes use of two theoretical approaches: the first that of ‘art worlds’, outlined by the American sociologist and jazz pianist, Howard Becker; the second that of affordances and constraints, which he himself have discussed in a book, The Business of ©reativity. In his book Art Worlds, Howard Becker argued that an art world is made up of ‘networks of people cooperating’ – a proposal that was later unwittingly taken up by Richard Caves when he suggested that the organization of personnel in creative industries is characterised by a motley crew of different specialists. Affordances can be physical – like the keyboard, display screen, and mouse built into a computer system which enable something to be done. Affordances facilitate functional, intellectual, and sensory understandings.
